Chaos Theory

Everything must go

The joys of living in California.

I so agree with this.

Vaccine? What vaccine? Also, today I heard a story about a pregnant chick NOT being offered the shot. I was all, excuse me?

Honesty is not the best policy if you want to stay in jail

"Al Wright has seen inmates act up to avoid being released during the harsh New Hampshire winters, but it was only recently the 28-year corrections veteran got two letters from individuals politely requesting an extended stay behind bars.
Wright, the superintendent of Rockingham County House of Corrections, says spending time in his jail isn't fun, but he isn't surprised that a tough economy has some inmates reluctant to be released during a time when jobs are few and temperatures are dropping.
The jail superintendent said he recently received letters from two inmates requesting they be kept in jail despite them having served out their court-ordered sentences.
Wright said the letters essentially asked: "Can I stay the winter?"
"My take on it is the economy is dumping so far that jail isn't looking as bad," Wright said.

Wright said the inmates requesting an extended stay at the Brentwood facility have been denied."

Take note, future criminals: just go hurt somebody rather than being polite and writing a letter.

Anybody can and will get turned down for health insurance

4-month-old is too fat for insurance.

Good news, bad news

"Cancer rates are way down, overall. Did you know? Also, the murder rate in New York City is as low as it's been in nearly 50 years and no one can really understand why, considering how desperate and depressed and murderous everyone is supposed to be these days. Who wants candy?"

The asshole bomb

"Uh-oh. Now that a terrorist has tried unsuccessfully to blow up a Saudi prince with a bomb shoved up his ass, the TSA is obliged to perform rectal exams on every flier for the rest of time. After all, once a jihadi failed to blow up a plane with his shoe, we all needed to start taking our shoes off. Then some knuckleheads believed they could blow up a plane with energy beverages and hair gel, so now we have to limit ourselves to 100ml of all liquids and gels, unless they're for babies or are prescription (because no mass-murderer would be so evil as to forge a doctor's note, which, as every junkie knows, cannot possibly be forged).

Now we found someone who was made to believe he could kill people with an asshole bomb, and so it follows that the TSA will have to ban -- or at least inspect -- our assholes. They're like opinions, you know, everybody's got one. Except, of course, most of us got to keep our assholes to ourselves. Not anymore.

Let's just be thankful that no one has yet convinced a suicidal murderer that he could blow up a plane with his mind, because once that happens, we're all in for mandatory airport trepannations. Because, you know, you can't be too safe. Every little bit helps. If an unhinged suicide bomber believes it's possible, we must take it seriously. To do less would be irresponsible."

Oy.

Only slightly satirical, when you think about it.

The ohs or the owes

What should we call this shitty decade?

Ouch.

Financially forced to divorce.

Me Talk Presidential One Day

Oh, this is horrifying.

"The president looked relaxed and was sitting behind the Resolute desk. He felt he’d made the major decision that everyone had been asking for. That always seemed to relax him. He liked being decisive. Excuse me, boldly decisive. The president seemed to be thinking of his memoirs. “This might go in as a big decision,” he mused.

“Definitely, Mr. President,” someone else observed. “This is a large decision.”

“We can’t even defend our own proposal?” the president asked. “Why did we propose it, then?” This was not bold decision making. There were about a dozen people gathered in the theater to watch him rehearse, and all of us remained silent as the president looked at us for an answer.

“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

The president understood the danger of talking constantly about the economy, especially if he had nothing new to say. “It’s hard to keep that kind of pace,” he said, noting that people would start tuning him out. The real problem, which no one at the White House seemed willing to confront, was that the country already had tuned him out. The president didn’t have credibility anymore. At one point, during another of our marathon speechwriting sessions, Steve Hadley and Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, let us know that the president needed an FDR line—like “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The president had his own suggestion for such a line, however: “Anxiety can feed anxiety.” So we produced a speech with no real information and our FDR knockoff line. Here were some of the kinder reviews: “lackluster”; “there is no news here”; “the president should go away for a while.” The stock market dipped further.

As Treasury started to use the bailout funds to invest directly in financial institutions, Ed wanted to come up with a name for the plan that made it sound better to the public, particularly conservatives who thought this was nothing more than warmed-over socialism. Yes, a catchphrase would solve everything. As we were working on this, Ed called a few of the writers on speakerphone with the idea he’d come up with: the Imperative Investment Intervention. “Oh, that sounds good,” one of us remarked, as the rest of us tried not to laugh. We decided that if a catchphrase must be deployed, surely we could come up with something better than a tongue twister with the acronym III. We started out with dark humor: the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Capitalism” Plan; the MARX Plan. I suggested that we also apologize to the former Soviet Union and retroactively concede the Cold War. Then one of the writers got serious and came up with the Temporary Emergency Market Protection Program, or TEMP. Not bad as gimmicks go, and Ed liked it. But he decided that instead of dropping it into a speech, we’d leak it to the press that this was the phrase we were using internally. Ed’s logic was that anything Bush said would be ignored, but if the press thought they’d got it from a leak, they’d find it more interesting and newsworthy. TEMP never made it as a catchphrase regardless.

“You think I wasn’t qualified?” he said to no one in particular. “I was qualified.”

At one point, he looked off into space and said to no one in particular, “What is this—a cruel hoax?”